Space Women

Girls Can't What?

This is a true story

It happened to me 

In real life 

My friend

A university educated person

Whose parents are both doctors

Told me 

Women cannot be astronauts 

Because they get their period

This. Is. Simply. Not. True.

In June 1963

Valentina Tereshkova

Became the first female 

To launch into space 

A little earlier 

In 1961 

Thirteen women

Known as the Mercury 13

Underwent 

The same training and tests 

As the men who would later become

The first American astronauts

And they passed

And then

Not because they were physically unable

Or intellectually inferior 

But because of 

Institutional bias against women

For being women 

The Mercury 13 

Were dismissed 

In all 

Fifty-six

Women have fought

And trained 

And gone into space

Two of them have 

Commanded the spaceships
And what about their periods?
One astronaut is quoted as saying
"Period in space, just like period on the ground
Don't worry about it."

Women do go into space 

And while they make up just 10% of the people

To hurtle past the atmosphere

The point is 

Women can be, and are, astronauts

The only thing keeping on the ground

Is prejudice and ignorance

The end.